random thoughts – Day 1,663 – (Sunday) – crashing back into reality

DIY Breakfast.

The last day of the vacation trip was filled with travel. The first few hours at home were filled with laundry before going to bed. There was a decent night's sleep with some crazy dreams featuring cameo appearances by some of my travel friends. 

Today was needed to recover from all the activity of travel, because, despite the eight hours of sleep, I was still tired and sometimes regular life can be an exhausting letdown. Thank goodness it’s Sunday with a Monday holiday because I really need the cushion to adjust to the crash landing back into reality. 

The resort had buffets and cooked to order menu items all day and night long. The BungaLowell (my house) had six eggs, some black olives, a few slices of American cheese, and a jar of sweet relish in the fridge and not much more. Two eggs were used to make a cheese omelet. By me. I had to do it myself. Nobody poured my coffee and added the cream. The toast was underdone. The butter was too cold to spread. And nobody cleaned up the egg pan afterward. Talk about a two-bit operation.

The vacation resort had juice.

There is no fresh fruit, no muffins, and no pastries. No colorful array of juices lined up on a counter, two pitchers deep. I never even got to find out what the Palladium resort "green juice" at breakfast tastes like because I ran out of days. I almost stayed an extra couple days and now I wish I had. This new hellhole has no juice at all, except for a can of frozen lemonade concentrate bought for a summer recipe I never got around to making. 

Home life is nothing like an all-inclusive vacation. the only “all-inclusive” here is that all the chores are included in my life's responsibilities. Trash, recycling, and yard waste day are tomorrow, so the team (once again, me) better get busy because the pickups are often early. Yuck.

The grounds are a mess.

At the resort, there were countless workers swinging machetes to trim trees. Workers walked the property to pick up trash and set everything right. I could use the services of a couple of them here. At present, The BungaLowell is hosting the neighbor’s pop-up shade tent which seems to have blown over the four-foot picket fence to rest upside down in my back yard. Two of the post caps from the six-foot fence on the back property line are laying in the yard, knocked off by either the squirrels or wind. There are probably more little surprises, but I never went outside today.

Humidity makes my
hair extra fluffy. 

The staff at The BungaLowell (me) was tired and slept late today. I didn’t go to dance class, which was stupid. It would likely have helped work out the upper body soreness from the foreign vacation activities of swimming and water aerobics and the mild leg soreness from all the walking. Instead of logging the 8,000 to 17,000 steps recorded daily with vacation activity, I was a lump on the couch huddled under a blanket. At 8:25 p.m., the fitness watch showed 668 steps. Regular home life could kill me.

My laptop seems to still think it’s still in Playa del Carmen and is showing the temperature at 83 degrees. I get it laptop, I wish we were still in that weather, too, instead of swathed in fleece, sitting under a blanket with the home thermostat showing 65 degrees with the heat on and the gas bill increasing with each passing minute. 

The only part of me that is finding the dry, cool, New England air beneficial is my hair. It has dropped its slightly wild, voluminous, bushy, humidity-induced look and has returned to its mostly flatter, calmer state. It didn't help that I forgot to pack my everyday comb and brush so styling was extra challenging with just finger combing and the small pick in my travel bag.

Beyond Burger Dinner.

For dinner tonight, I had to order an a la carte delivery (at an additional cost), because apparently The BungaLowell food service staff has gone on strike. At least the "Beyond Burger Dinner" was delivered quickly and still hot. The sweet potato fries were extra tasty. The salad and more than half the fries were saved for Monday's lunch, to delay grocery shopping until the afternoon in case of another slow moving morning.

If I were leaving a review of today's accommodations, most of the categories would get zero stars. The service stinks, the food prepared onsite was mediocre, the weather is not so great, and the grounds are unattended. There is laundry drying all over the bathroom and laundry closet. The only interesting feature of the facility is the performance art entertainment provided by a sweet little cat which sometimes appears to meow and then hides. The entertainment would get five stars. The rest of the staff should be dismissed.